


Appendicitis (super original title)

by taylor_tut



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: Appendicitis, Fever, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Sick Character, Sick Hawkeye, Sickfic, Stomach Ache, Vomiting, hawkeye pierce whump, hawkeye whump, sick hawkeye pierce
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-17
Updated: 2019-01-17
Packaged: 2019-10-11 13:23:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17447801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taylor_tut/pseuds/taylor_tut
Summary: A request from my tumblr for Hawkeye getting appendicitis and trying to push through it.





	Appendicitis (super original title)

Yesterday, Hawkeye had been willing to write off the dull stomachache and nausea as just a side effect of lunch, but now that it had been well over 24 hours since he’d started throwing up and the pain was doing nothing but sharpening, he wasn’t so sure. He’d skipped breakfast in favor of an hour of sleeping in and had asked BJ to ensure the Colonel knew he wasn’t hungover, then had sat through lunch with his friends quietly, not even really bothering to try to keep up with the arguments and banter because it made his head spin. The OR had been quiet with only one small ambulance of wounded all day, but he was somehow still exhausted as he allowed BJ to drag him out of the tent for dinner. 

“Come on, Hawkeye, you haven’t eaten a bite since yesterday,” Father Mulcahy encouraged, setting a tray of spaghetti in front of him despite that he’d already refused to get one himself. “I’m no doctor, but I'm beginning to get concerned.” 

“Thanks, but no thanks, Padre,” he refused, sliding the tray away from himself. “My stomach’s still sore and mess food will just be adding insult to injury.”Margaret slid it back in front of him with a frown. 

“If you haven’t eaten all day, that’s probably why you’ve got a stomachache,” she chastised. “Don’t be a baby and just eat your damn food.” Sometimes, she missed the maternal mark and sounded just like his father.

“Unless you want dinner to make an encore appearance, I’m not touching it,” he said, pushing the tray away once more. It was bad enough to have to smell everyone else’s food, let alone thinking about taking a bite. “Not to mention, I don’t trust it. It’s poisoned me once; not again; not today.”

BJ rolled his eyes. “It’s not food poisoning,” he reiterated for the hundredth time. “We all get the same slop; we’d all be sick.”

“Then intentional sabotage,” Hawkeye insisted. 

“I’ll have the royal taster fired.”

Hawkeye gave a sarcastic laugh, but the movement jarred his stomach, and he pressed a hand firmly to his abdomen instinctively, something that elicited a scrutinizing look from BJ. 

“So, if it’s not food poisoning—”

“Which it IS,” Hawkeye interjected. 

“—Then what do you think this could be? You’re looking pretty pale, maybe it’s a stomach bug?”

“You’d be pale, too, if you spent all night throwing up.” Margaret frowned. 

“All night?” she asked, half sympathetic and half disgusted, scooting away from him when he nodded. “Sounds like gastroenteritis to me. Keep your germs to yourself; we can’t afford to have all our medical staff sick.”

“Last I checked, food poisoning was not contagious,” he maintained, feeling the vice that was gripping his abdomen tighten with just the effort of sitting here and chatting with his friends. “I’m going back to the Swamp.” 

The group began their cacophony of disappointed noises, but Hawkeye halted them with a dismissive hand gesture. 

“Aw, Hawkeye, now don’t be like that,” Father Mulcahy argued, “we’re merely concerned for your wellbeing.”

He sighed. “I know,” he caved, “sorry. I just need a little bit more sleep. I’ll see you all later.” With that, he stood from the table, leaving his tray of untouched food behind and trying to pretend he didn’t notice that the others were watching his slightly-hunched posture shuffle out of the mess. 

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Mulcahy admitted, and though BJ couldn’t help but agree, he didn’t want to admit that out loud. Hawkeye was an adult, and a doctor at that: he would know if this were a problem. 

“I’m sure he’ll be fine,” he hoped more than believed. 

 

Turns out, this was one of those rare occasions in which BJ was completely wrong. The mere two hours of rest that Hawkeye had gotten before the loudspeaker announced incoming wounded appeared to do absolutely nothing, as he dragged himself into the surgical dressing room looking worse than he had at lunch.

“Hawk, I’m not going to lie to you, you look awful,” he pointed out, and his worried observation gathered the attention of Charles, who looked up from changing into his own scrubs to get a proper look at Pierce. If anything, BJ was understating it—he was shaky and pale, with dark circles under his eyes. His movements were tense as if he were in a lot more pain than he was letting on, which was something that he’d never had expected from Pierce, who usually had no qualms about whining at even the slightest inconvenience. 

“This may be the only time I ever say this, but Hunnicutt is right,” he contributed, watching in disbelief as Pierce actually had the gall to begin dressing for surgery.

“Did you get any sleep at all?” 

Hawkeye gave a snide shrug. “It’s kind of difficult to sleep when you’re spending your nap time vomiting in the latrine,” he deflected, but BJ was too well-adapted to his sarcasm to take the bait. 

“You haven’t eaten anything since breakfast yesterday; what could you possibly still have to throw up?”

“Water, mostly; probably a few vital organs. I didn’t care to analyze it.”

Before he could move to scrub in, Charles stopped him with a hand on his chest. 

“Pierce, if you can’t even keep fluids down, you’re doubtlessly dehydrated. Here, give me your hand.”

“Not until you’re down on one knee; do it proper.” Electing to ignore the commentary, he took Hawkeye’s hand and pinched the skin between his thumb and his forefinger, watching it slowly, sluggishly sink back into place. 

“Just as I thought: you’re extremely dehydrated.” He pressed two fingers to the inside of his wrist and didn't like that result any better. “Your pulse is racing. Hunnicutt, could you—”

“On it,” BJ curtailed, already rolling an IV stand to his side with a bottle of saline fluids hanging from its hook. Hawkeye offered his arm with a remarkable lack of protest, which BJ took to mean that he must really feel lousy. He wiped down the area above the vein in the top of his hand with alcohol and stuck him with the needle, then taped it down. Hawkeye didn’t even flinch.

“That should have you back on your feet in no time,” Charles reassured, his prudish smile falling as he watched Hawkeye stand to follow them into the OR. “Just where do you think you’re going?”

Hawkeye fumbled in confusion. “To do my job. You said yourself, this should make me feel better.”

“Yes, but the underlying cause of your ailment is still to be determined,” he fought, “and until we can do so, I would highly recommend that you remain resting.” 

“Well, there’s about 12 wounded kids in there who would highly prefer that I didn’t,” he argued in a tone that implied that he wasn’t going to budge. Crumpling under BJ’s desperately patient gaze, he sighed. “We’ve all operated when we weren’t feeling 100%,” he reasoned, “and I’m definitely not 100%, but I can manage.”

“‘Can’ or ‘will?’” BJ asked, but the question ended up being directed mostly to Charles, as Hawkeye had already left to wash his hands. 

“This can only go very poorly,” Charles warned, and, in a rare display of solidarity, BJ nodded. 

 

There were just too many critically wounded in the OR for anyone to get a break. It was quiet without his running commentary, though not for lack of BJ and even eventually Potter trying to engage him in banter, and the near silence only made him focus more on the pain. Over the course of several hours, the stabbing sensation only intensified, moving to come to a sharp, knife-like point between his bellybutton and his right hip. He was removing a bit of shrapnel from a soldier’s stomach when he really, definitively decided that it was too much to handle. Hawkeye groaned, doubling over as another unbearable wave of pain gripped his abdomen.

“Nurse, I’m going to need some morphine,” he called, and Margaret shot him a confused look.

“The man’s sedated,” she argued, earning herself a glare.

“Not for him; for me.”

“Pierce, I’m not allowing you to perform surgery all doped up on morphine,” Potter said sternly. “If you need to get out of here—”

“Not a full shot,” Hawkeye argued through gritted teeth. “Just enough to stop my stomach from bursting through my abdominal wall.” 

“If the pain is that bad, it might be appendicitis,” Margaret suggested, and Hawkeye nodded. She wiped the sweat from his forehead with a sponge.

“I have a feeling you’re right,” he admitted. Charles rolled his eyes disbelievingly.

“Appendicitis is serious, and you’ve been ill for nearly two days. You’d be in agony.”

“Believe me, I passed agony a few hours ago. Morphine, Margaret, please.” She obeyed, the cutting edge of his tone slicing through any doubts she might have about giving him hard drugs while he was working. He needed something strong, and he needed it probably several hours ago, but all she could do was inject the syringe into his arm until he made a vague ‘stop’ motion with his hands after barely enough of it to even put a dent in severe pain.

“Doctor, if that’s the case, you shouldn’t be working; you should be resting. If there are no beds in post-op, you can go back to the Swamp, but—”

“Just… give me a shot of penicillin.” 

BJ glanced up from his own patient. “For what?”

“What do you mean, ‘for what?’ For the raging infection that’s turning my most useless organ into a ticking time bomb.”

Margaret hesitated with the syringe of antibiotic. She’d never heard of anyone attempting to control appendicitis with just medication, but Pierce, despite being an idiot in the streets, was a very competent doctor on the hospital sheets. 

“Will this even work?” she asked, and Pierce shrugged.

“I mean, most people don’t use antibiotics to control appendicitis, but—”

“That’s because most people aren’t idiots,” BJ interjected. 

“He’s right, Hawkeye,” Potter added. “This isn’t something that you can just power through. We may have to remove your appendix.”

Visible relief spread across his face as the meager amount of morphine took action, not erasing the lines of pain entirely but allowing him to at least stand up straight enough to look over the operative space of his patient. 

“That’s great. I’ll help you free up a bed.” 

Margaret moved to take the scalpel, taking pity on him for the first time all day. She’d honestly believed it was a hangover for most of yesterday, but watching a pale, clearly feverish and in pain Hawkeye still doing his damnedest to push through surgery after surgery despite allowing only just enough pain medication to not keel over and working around the needle in his arm that was pumping him full of IV fluids because he couldn’t hold down anything orally: something about it softened her heart a little. He was too tired to fight about it, but he’d do it anyway if she was going to make him do this the hard way, so she decided for once to give in. She gave him the penicillin as gently as she could and then rubbed his arm lightly over the spot, hoping that it was soothing. 

“Okay, Captain,” she finally caved, “just tell me what you need and I’ll get it for you.”

The gaze he cast her over his mask, though tired and drawn, was grateful. “Thank you,” he said. “I’m seeing double, on and off, and it’s not from the morphine. You’re going to have to tell me when I’m aiming at the wrong spot.” His fever had to be quite high if he was having visual disturbances, which suggested that if this was indeed appendicitis, they’d need to move fast. 

“Alright,” she agreed.

“Gentlemen, I’m declaring that Hawkeye is the first priority of the second priority wounded,” Potter announced. “As soon as we have everyone stabilized, we’re getting that CBC, and Hawkeye, you’re taking a bed in post-op for fluids and morphine.”

“I look forward to it,” Hawkeye replied. “Cutting—here?” Margaret nodded, watching the foreboding tremble in his hands steady as he refocused and willed himself to ignore the chills. And, of course, he didn’t miss a single piece of shrapnel, didn’t slip up and create a single hesitation cut, didn’t leave a single patient until they were pieced back together.

 

By the time they’d finished the first priorities, he was wearing the doctor’s coats of both BJ and Charles, who had wordlessly draped them over Hawkeye each time they noticed he was shivering. They’d taken the IV out after giving him two bottles of fluids and Margaret had readministered the morphine twice, a slightly larger dose each time, but still, he staggered out of the OR, completely unable to stand up straight. Colonel Potter couldn’t afford to send any of the medical staff after him, but luckily, Father Mulcahy had come to offer a hand. Before he could even give the order, the priest was rushing after him. 

“Hawkeye,” Mulcahy called, forgoing stripping off his bloody scrubs in favor of supporting him as his knees gave way beneath him. He could feel the heat radiating from him in terrifying waves and all he could do was help him to the ground without hitting his head on the way down.

“M’okay,” Hawkeye muttered, barely finding the energy to open his mouth to speak. Surgery was always exhausting and this was not the first time that Mulcahy had seen any of the doctors in a state of what he liked to call “rag-doll,” in which they lacked even the energy to hold up their own bodies, but right now, Hawkeye was barely even lucid. He pressed the backs of his fingers to Hawkeye’s cheek and nearly panicked. 

“I’m going to get one of the doctors,” he said, “but first, let’s get you lying down.” Hawkeye was malleable in his grasp as he tried and failed to support enough of his weight to get him up and onto the bed. “On second thought, just stay put. I’ll be back in a moment. Please stay awake.” Hawkeye nodded, but the time in between Padre leaving and returning with BJ close behind him was a blur, so he wasn’t totally sure that he didn’t black out a little. BJ was talking to him, he was sure, but he felt like he was underwater and couldn’t really make much of it out. Just how much morphine had he gotten? It wasn’t working, that was one thing he knew for sure. He felt BJ tapping his face, tried to look at him when he pried his eyelids open but couldn’t figure out which of the three BJs in his tripling vision to focus upon. It wasn’t until BJ began to palpate his abdomen that he was rudely snapped back into consciousness when he felt the pressure of his hands rapidly withdraw themselves, sending blinding pain through his stomach and causing him to yell out as he grabbed BJ’s wrist instinctively. 

“Definitely his appendix,” BJ said, using a serious tone that he reserved for patients and had never used before with his best friend.

“Then get it out,” Hawkeye managed to add his input, eliciting small smiles from both of the worried faces hovering in his blurry vision. “M’not attached to it.”

BJ nodded, standing to doubtlessly get a stretcher. “Do you have a reservation?” Despite the pain, Hawkeye smirked. 

“I know the manager,” he retorted, trying to keep his pained grunts to a minimum as BJ and Father Mulcahy transferred him to the stretcher.

“Name dropping, huh?” BJ teased. “I’ll see what I can do.” Together, they set Hawkeye onto a surgical table and plugged a new IV into his arm, and he felt the sedative begin to work almost immediately. The last thing he heard before he fully drifted off was BJ reassuring him that he was going to be fine, so he chose to obey the command to close his eyes and go to sleep.

 

When he woke up, he was in a lot less pain. He hadn’t more than stirred before BJ was at his side, taking a seat on the edge of his bed and stopping his hands from moving around, probably because they’d seen enough disoriented soldiers rip out IVs in their post-sedative confusion. 

“Hey, Hawk,” he greeted, unpinning Hawkeye’s hands as soon as Hawkeye gave him a cheerful nod. 

“Morning,” he guessed, but BJ shook his head. 

“Not quite,” he corrected. “It’s about midnight. How are you feeling?”

“A lot better,” he admitted. “So I’m guessing it was my appendix, after all?” 

“You probably bought yourself a few hours with the penicillin,” BJ said, praise wrapped up in a tone that was not at all happy. “By the time you finally collapsed on Padre, your temp was through the roof and so was your white cell count. It’s a wonder that your appendix hadn’t ruptured already.”

Hawkeye put his fists in the air tiredly. “Yay,” he cheered quietly. BJ rolled his eyes. 

“That was really stupid, what you pulled today,” he scolded. 

Hawkeye nodded. “I know.”

“Radar is sleeping in the next room in a chair; he was so worried about you that he refused to leave. You really scared everyone.”

“I know.” 

BJ sighed. “But the four kids you performed surgery on today are all doing fine. So I’m not going to say that I don’t know why you did it.”

Hawkeye wasn’t quite sure what to say to that. “I hate this place,” he finally decided upon, and BJ chuckled humorlessly. 

“Yeah,” he agreed. “I know.” He patted him on the leg, then shook off the moment to get right back into their normal routine, reaching into his coat pocket for a thermometer and unsheathing it. “Alright, I want to get another read on your temperature. Turn over.” Hawkeye laughed so hard BJ had to check his stitches. In a few days, he’d be up and around enough to watch over post-op again, and a few days after that, he’d be back in the OR performing surgeries. Instead of dwelling on that, he let the lingering of the effects of the sedative take him back under so he could catch up on some much-needed sleep. 


End file.
